How Much Interval Training
How often can you do interval training each week? Can people do it six times per week? Or every day?
Well, you shouldn’t be able to do it every day. If you can do interval training six times a week then you’re not busting your butt hard enough in the interval training in the first place.
As I always like to say, look at the playoffs here in any sport. They’re not playing six days a week. They’re taking a day off. So if pro athletes take a day off, why can’t you take a day off? Really I think a lot of people still aren’t getting the hang of the interval intensity.
Now this is maybe a little bit beyond a beginner intermediate answer when I say this, but I mean people are telling me they’re doing intervals for 45 minutes. Well, what type of interval are you doing 45 minutes? You can do aerobic intervals for 45 minutes. That’s fine. I understand that.
But fat loss intervals don’t need to be done for 45 minutes. If you’re doing the short interval type training I have no idea how you could possibly do an interval training for 45 minutes. You’re probably really doing cardio for the last 15 of it and you may as well shut it down and go do something else and recover.
By doing intervals a lot you end up with the exactly problem that we’re trying to get away from with the cardio stuff, which is the over use injury risk. Do intervals no more than three or four times per week if you’re going to use them.
I’m moving to try and promote to my readers to anyone that comes in contact with me to get away from even machines for interval training and try and get outside as much as possible, even if you have to brave some elements.
So get out there. Body weight circuits. Barbell complexes. Get outside to do your interval training. Run with your dog. Don’t think that you can’t build a perfect body outside of the gym. You can do it and I think you’ll have a lot more fun that way.
Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Author, Turbulence Training.
Try Turbulence Training today with the Trial Version for only $4.95
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